October 26, 2015

The Muslim Migrants and the Death of the West

By Selwyn Duke

Death can happen suddenly, as when being shot or hit by a truck. But it’s more often a process involving steady and observable decline. It’s also true that symptoms can be confused with causes. Such is the case with listing Western civilization and the Muslim migrant crisis, opines the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens. In a rather insightful piece entitled “In Defense of Christendom,” he writes:

The death of Europe is in sight. Still hazy and not yet inevitable, but nevertheless visible and drawing nearer—like a distant planet in the lens of an approaching satellite. Europe is reaching its end not because of its sclerotic economy, or stagnant demography, or the dysfunctions of the superstate. Nor is the real cause the massive influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants. Those desperate people are just the latest stiff breeze against the timber of a desiccated civilization.

Of course, critics point out that most of the migrants aren’t “desperate” at all. Estimates inform that 75 percent are males, mostly young and strong. Contrary to the narrative, only 25 percent are Syrian; moreover, as Muslim refugee and Jordanian opposition leader Dr. Mudar Zahran pointed out, “Seventy-five percent of those arriving from Syria come from safe area[s]; actually, the ones in disaster areas cannot … leave.” They are economic migrants, he tells us, seizing the opportunity of the current crisis to emigrate to a “rich nation with a generous welfare system,” such as Germany or Sweden. A good example is the tragic early September story of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who washed up on a Turkish beach. The unfortunate child’s death was used to beat the drum for open European borders, but here’s the truth: He, along with his parents and brother, had been living safely in Turkey for three years. And why did his father take the family on a journey, destination Greece, on a 15-foot dinghy?